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Star Rating

4 stars

I read this book twice. Once before it was anywhere near being published and again as just before it was published. For full disclosure, I am noted in this book’s acknowledgments. An author in a writing group gave Michael Darling my email. I’d received and read the first copy long before I ever met the author. So I would consider this review unbiased.

This book earned the four stars. It is a pretty good debut novel. Both times I struggled with the beginning. The cliche of starting in the office of a private eye didn’t escape me. But how many debut novels don’t have a less than ideal beginning. Even J. K. Rowling’s first chapter from Uncle Vernon’s point of view is criticized heavily. Needless to say, I forgive rough beginnings for debut authors.

Why did it come up short of 5 stars? Well, both times I struggled with the beginning. The cliche of starting in the office of a private eye didn’t escape me. But how many debut novels don’t have a less than ideal beginning. Even J. K. Rowling’s first chapter from Uncle Vernon’s point of view is criticized heavily. Needless to say, I forgive rough beginnings for debut authors.

Also, at times the writing of the character movement and descriptions seemed stiff. Fortunately, he had just enough humor and tension for me to mostly ignore that, but for some, this stiffness might be an issue that pulls them from the story too often.

Book Details

Got Luck was written by Michael Darling and was published by Future House Publishing on March 16, 2016. It is 330 pages long. This is Michael Darling’s first novel.

The novel’s premise

Goethe (Got) Luck is private investigator about reach his 10,000th day of being alive and find out who he really is. He can use magic. He is the first to have strength in earth magic for hundreds of years. And it just turns out that the case he is working on just happens to more about him than he every would have realized.

Editing

Quality: Above Average

The published version is far more polished than the early version I read. I found less that two errors per 100 pages. In fact, I only noted four things.

She gently rolled up my pants leg (pant leg?)

Never apologize.”” (Two end quotes)

*** (More than one of the section breaks were not centered, though most were.)

Imagination and Uniqueness

The author’s imagination is definitely not lacking. Getting that imagination onto paper was mostly executed well. I already discussed the struggle with the beginning and some of the stiff descriptions and character movement. Despite that, the world was vividly depicted by the author. I never struggled with imagining the characters, the setting, or the action.

I wouldn’t be able to call it extremely unique. Jim Butcher starts off Harry Dresden as a Private Investigator and wizard. This is pretty similar, but not the same. Got doesn’t know who he is, he just knows that magic and weird stuff exists.

However, despite the lack of apparent uniqueness, the story held up quite well.

Characters

Goethe “Got” Luck is the unusual name of the main character. The feel of the writing suggests this guy is approaching forty, but we quickly learn her is only twenty-seven. Despite the inconsistency of the age in feel versus reality, Got was a very likable character. The hints of his past and his lack of heavy emotional reaction to weirdness were foreshadowing us to understand who he really is.

Erin is a drop dead gorgeous county coroner who doesn’t really give Goethe too much attention until they meet up in the Behindbeyond and are unexpectedly paired together. Her character is very deep and we only just start delving into it when the novel ends.

Got has a best friend, who is a stiff and easy to write one-dimensional filler character. He doesn’t talk or say much, yet seems to be a chick magnet. A conflict, perhaps. But he is in the novel little enough that it works.

The bad guy, I loved to hate. Which is all one can ask for, right? I’m not going to tell you who it is because that is revealed later in the novel and I wouldn’t want to give it away. His motivations are real-world, or real for the Behindbeyond, anyway.

Magic System (fantasy)

Magic

The magic system is heavily based on the Fae and the Behindbeyond. Humans don’t have magic, the fae do. The magic didn’t have anything unique. Normally I would bash the magic system for the lack of uniqueness. There were different powers for the different elements, but somehow, I despite its lack of uniqueness, I found little complaint in the magic system.

Perhaps the story of the magic system was unique enough. The author told the story of the first half-fae half-human born with earth power. And supposedly most with earth power die the first time they tap into the earth.

It also probably helped that we didn’t have a movie montage of him learning spells, though there definitely were some learning scenes, however, those all served the dual purpose of adding sexual tension, too, so they weren’t boring.

Stain

There was a second magical element to Got. I really liked that Got could see colors swirling around certain people. I really hated that it was called a “stain.” That word just didn’t fit, especially when the colors were beautiful. It seemed to me like “stain” would be a good name when a person’s colors were corrupted, but when not corrupted, there should have been a different name.

However, the name aside, it was a unique take on seeing someone’s aura. This wasn’t in the early copy of the book, the first time I read it, but was in the second copy and made the book much better.

eBook Quality

Quality: Average

There weren’t any problems with the eBook quality, which is good.

Parental Guide

Profanity: Zero F-words. There was very little profanity. I’d have to search the book to figure outSexuality: There is a fair amount of sexual tension. There is one description of a fae who was barely covered (mostly naked)Violence: The violence involves fighting and magic and demons. It is mostly gore-free, with some descriptive blood and frightening scenes.

The author toned down some extremes. I remember a scene in the early copy of this book where, the author described one of the Fae standing naked in all her womanly glory, without an ounce of shame. While that made a statement about the fae and had an edge to it, I might have said readers of this book had to be fifteen or older. However, in the published release, that scene was cleaned up by partially covering her up. It seems much cleaner than I remembered it. Any child twelve and up could read and enjoy this book.

About the Author

Michael Darling graduated from Weber State University with a degree in English Literature and loves to blend the classic with the contemporary in his writing.

He has worked as a butcher, a librarian, and a magician. Not all at the same time. He nests in the exquisitely beautiful Rocky Mountains with his equally breathtaking wife and six guinea pigs, one of whom thinks she’s a dog and three of whom claim to be children. Michael’s award-winning short fiction is frequently featured in anthologies. Got Luck is his first novel, which is scheduled for publication in March 2016.

Star Rating

I gave Celeste The Unseen 5 stars. Eleanor’s story continues to thrill in this second installment to the series.

From start to finish, this book passed the stay up late test. I started just before midnight thinking to read myself to sleep and had to force myself to stop reading at 4:00 AM and finish the following evening.

The meeting with Celeste held intrigue and Eleanor’s social situation made the book so real to life that I almost didn’t consider this book a sci-fi or fantasy, yet it is.

Book Details

Celeste The Unseen by Johnny Worthen is 376 pages. Jolly Fish Press published it on June 1, 2015. It is a young adult novel approved for ages 12 and up.

The novel’s premise

A girl of 16 is no longer a wallflower, no longer unseen, as she desperately hopes to be. What is being seen going to cost her?

Editing

Quality: High

When I read the first eBook (Eleanor the Unseen), I highlighted a dozen typos and formatting issues. I contacted the publisher due to the low quality. The publisher responded that they fixed them all with a post release update; which means we at Sci-fi Fantasy Readers contributed to the higher quality of the first eBook.

I expected the same in this eBook but it did not happen. I usually find just less than one typo per 100 pages from the biggest publishing houses. In 370+ pages, I found two, indicating this book was published with a higher quality that you would expect.

Imagination and Uniqueness

This 2nd book can’t be unique as it is a second book in the series, right? Wrong. Despite knowing what I was getting into after reading book 1, the story still felt fresh and new.

The character’s history, the social situations, the complexity of trying to remain unseen yet be forced into an unexpected popularity creates a unique juxtaposition that pulls the reader forward in the story without a desire to put the book down.

Having read a lot of good first books in a series, I don’t always follow-up with the series unless it is too compelling not to, as this book was.

Characters

Eleanor is now sixteen, and though wanting to stay ignored by her peers in a small town with a small K through 12 school, popularity hits her unexpectedly. Her attempts to hide in plain sight are thwarted and she must deal with impending fear of what will happen when she is seen.

David Venn is her boyfriend, and with Tabitha now passed, his mother steps in to provide guardianship. But the situation is precarious and cannot last. When will she suffer the consequences of failing to be unseen?

There were numerous side characters that were surprising flushed out without any boring info dumps on them. Every character had depth, something that is quite hard to accomplish with primarily one point of view character.

Magic System (fantasy) / Real Science (Science Fiction)

It is pretty much magical realism done well. One person is special in the entire novel. The world is 100% normal. The setting is a small town in Wyoming. The specialty follows scientific rules. Laws of matter and mass, and one could argue that this was just nature fiction not sci-fi or fantasy.

eBook Quality

Quality: High

I found zero eBook quality issue in this book. That is impressive.

Parental Guide

Profanity: There was very minor swearing. No extreme words.Sexuality: There is little more than teenage hormones.Violence: Their is a an abusive man. A violent scene in a trailer. final scene involves guns and a man is shot and killed.

About the Author

Johnny (Tie Dye) Worthen is also the author of Eleanor the Unseen and Beatresyl. He graduated with a B.A. in English, minor in Classics and a Master’s in American Studies from the University of Utah. His novels have a very realistic feel. He lives in Sandy, Utah and enjoys spending time with his boys.

Star Rating

I gave Eleanor The Unseen 5 stars. Eleanor’s story is superb. I could see this rising to be one of the books that captures many of readers.

The second half passed the stay up late test. It was so good I stayed up til 2:45 AM finishing the story. The first half was good, but I could put it down and go to sleep.

The renewing of a childhood friendship was done amazingly well. The progression of the story, Eleanor’s character arc, all enhanced the enjoyment of this novel for me.

Book Details

Eleanor The Unseen by Johnny Worthen is 360 pages. Jolly Fish Press published it on July 1, 2014. It is a young adult novel approved for ages 12 and up.

The novel’s premise

A girl of 15 wants to remain a wallflower to hide who and what she really is.

Editing

Quality: Average

I made almost a dozen editing highlights that will glaring typos. Also, the editors allowed a lot of weak sentences. Most weak sentences are easy to find as they are passive voice and slow down the reading. Added to the eBook isues and there were over twenty glaring issues with the novel.

Imagination and Uniqueness

I wouldn’t normally call a paranormal romance unique, but this book did not have the feel of other paranormal romance novels. I felt it was unique, but what was unique. It took me a while to realize the uniqueness was in the details. First, it wasn’t completely romance. It was part well-done cancer drama in Tabitha. It was part well-done high school girl-boy drama. It was part an introduction to small town life. It was part introduction to an Native American (Shoshone) folklore.

Characters

Eleanor is a girl of fifteen trying to stay ignored by her peers in a small town with a small K through 12 school. Why she chooses to hide in plain sight is a mystery.

Tabitha, Eleanor’s adopted mother, almost steals the show—er novel. She is a very well-written character. He story and her fight with cancer is almost worthy of her own novel.

David Venn is a good guy. A childhood friend who moved away and has moved back around the start of sophmore year.

Magic System (fantasy) / Real Science (Science Fiction)

It is pretty much magical realism done well. One person is special in the entire novel. The world is normal. The specialty followed scientific rules. Laws of matter and mass, and one could argue that this was natural fiction, not science fiction.

eBook Quality

Quality: Below Average

Update: The publisher notified me that the below formatting issue has been resolved.

The Kindle format had indents of a single space. It really distracted my reading. In fact, it was a distracting problem for me for the entire book. Indents should be a minimum of two spaces and three to five is recommended. It was especially difficult during dialog with quotes. This is an inexcusable mistake by the publisher.

Multiple times after hyphen, either a new line or a carriage return broke the sentence to the next line early.

The story deserves 5 stars but the eBook formatting didn’t. In fact, if the formatting is improved, I will gladly come back and edit rate this book 5 stars.

Parental Guide

Profanity: There was very minor swearing. No extreme words.Sexuality: There is little more than teenage hormones.Violence: Minor fighting. Knife wounds.

About the Author

Johnny (Tie Dye) Worthen is also the author of Beatresyl. He graduated with a B.A. in English, minor in Classics and a Master’s in American Studies from the University of Utah. His novels have a very realistic feel. He lives in Sandy, Utah and enjoys spending time with his boys.

Star Rating

I gave Five – Out of the Dark 3-1/2 stars. I had fun reading this urban fantasy world. The book had enjoyable characters and a descent plot. A lot of the ideas resonated with other stories that I’ve read.

At first, the story felt a little rushed. I struggled through the first 25%. However, once I got through that part, it turned into a much better read. The story didn’t disappoint and I finished the book a few days later.

Parts of the book passed the “keep me up reading” test. I read past midnight two nights and had to stop myself from staying up late.

Five is definitely a fun read. I recommend it for young teenage boys and girls everywhere.

Book Details

Five: Out of the Dark (Five #1) by Holli Anderson was published by Curiosity Quills Press on August 20, 2013. It is 267 pages long and targeted toward young adults.

The novel’s premise

Five kids who can use magic are pulled toward each other. The meet in Seattle and live on the streets (or under them) together fighting the evil that goes unseen by ordinary people. A string of paranormally suspicious suicides in a nearby high school sets them on a quest to save the students. All the while they have their own problems they are dealing with as well, such as curing Lyconthropy.

Editing

Quality: Below Average

I didn’t highlight any typos, so you will be happy to know this book is pretty much typo free. However, I made 55 highlights, almost all were editing issues beyond your typical typo. This is a great example of why a good editor does more than spell checking.

There were some distracting comma problems. OK, let’s be real. The commas went crazy. Commas immediately after a conjunction should be rare, if ever, not almost always. I didn’t even highlight the all. When your comma’s are bad to the point of being distracting to the reader, it means the editor didn’t do a good job. Commas after conjunction stats: but (419)

There were multiple places where the sentences were confusing. More often than usual, I had to re-read sentences to understand them. This is where and editor or proofreader should step in. Every author writes confusing sentences. But having editors and proofreaders highlight sentences that are confusing and ask for them to be clarified can really help.

Also there were a few writer’s convenience moments. In fact, one of them was the utterly cliche “by the way I know karate” moment, which is such an obvious and well-known faux pas that it’s appearance was doubly shocking. Such character skills should be introduced and developed, so they don’t come across as the result of writer’s convenience.

Imagination and Uniqueness

The imagination was solid. She built her world in Seattle around the Five and her world came to life in my mind as I read.

While a lot of the ideas resonated with other stories that I’ve read, I found very little that stood out as unique in this book. This book had young adult characters using urban fantasy magic. I really wish there was something unique I could point to.

Characters

Out of the Five, the main character is Paige. She starts to use magic and ends up running away. She finds herself running into Jonathan, who also becomes one of the five. He also becomes her main crush.

Alec, Seth, and Halli join up soon after. Halli has no memory of her past.

Jonathan is bitten by a changeling. The affect it has on him hinders Paige and his relationship. The pinnacle of the story hinges on what Paige is willing to do to save him.

I think Paige and Jonathan and Halli and well done. Alec is more of one dimensional side character who likes to tease. To me, Seth was the most fuzzy character. I felt like I never clearly envisioned him.

Magic System

The magic came on fast. The information about the world was pretty much dropped in a sentence or two. We go from having met a single demon to suddenly this:

We stayed out of human affairs and concentrated our efforts on the un-human. On dark forces like Demons and the evil men who summoned them. Or baby-stealing Faeries, flesh-eating Trolls, annoying Goblins, and other such nefarious creatures.

I would have liked to have been shown the world subtlety throughout the story, but instead the mystery of the world was ripped away by that unnecessary sentence.

As the characters use magic, they get tired. Magic had adverse affects on technology.

eBook Quality

Quality: Average in regular mode but Poor in night mode.

The eBook was easy to read. There were little to no eBook formatting issues. With the regular white background and black text, the eBook is great.

The table of contents being oddly placed at the end of the book seemed out of place. Also a second book cover also placed at the end of the book, as well as the TOC linking to the cover at the end of the book felt strange.

Unfortunately, all the images had white backgrounds and were blaring white in night mode. Chapters had huge images with too much white. The drop caps and separators were done with white-background images too. It really makes me wonder if Curiosity Quills has anyone with any experience creating eBooks. Don’t use white-background images for letters, no, not even drop caps. Especially not for the “Chapter Three” heading. And the image wouldn’t be so bad if the surrounding background was transparent and they had only left a one or two pixel white outline around important part of the image.

Parental Guide

Profanity: There was no swearing that I remember.Sexuality: Nothing beyond a kiss.Violence: There was a little blood here and there. Nothing of major note.

Though the character’s ages are young adult, I think Five: Out of the Dark is clean enough for all ages, from middle grade on up.

About the Author

We sat by Holli at a book signing at a writers conference. She is as nice as a woman can get. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Nursing and has a particular love for anything fantasy.

She is a member of the Utah Fantasy Authors group and will be signing copies of her book at the Salt Lake City Comic Con this coming September 4, 5, 6 of 2014.

Along with her husband, Steve, and their four sons, she lives in Grantsville, Utah—the same small town in which she grew up.

We need to ask Holli how she grew up in Grantville all her life but somehow chose Seattle as the setting for her book.

Star Rating

Two stars is all I can give this one. I enjoyed the characters but the story was a little rough. While I liked Sarah, her flippant jumping from boy to boy did not seem believable. She went from Ben, to Dev and Ray, to just Ray, to War.

This book almost lost me right from the beginning. Shaun and Sarah Gallows walk into a nest of about twenty vampires and kill them all as if it were child’s play. It didn’t seem hard for them. The characters were never in danger. The tension was zero. The only cost: vampire dust made Shaun cough. It got a little better and there were eventually some more difficult tasks that actually cost the characters more than coughing up vampire dust.

I eventually got into the first novel, if barely. Sharon hooked me more with Shaun than with Sarah. I identified enough with him to want to keep reading even though other parts of the book had me wanted to throw it out.

Star Rating

2-1/2 stars is a slight improvement from book 1. But again, book 2 was just barely good enough for me to keep reading too. I think the Shaun and Elle relationship really worked—that subplot made the least sense. The real plot was just a confusing mess. The repeated teleportation to Melissa’s house didn’t work for me. I found myself bored until Shaun actually fought Melissa’s Vampire father. Then all it took to destabilize Melissa was a single comment about how Melissa’s dad should have removed her curse but didn’t? Really? She got all emotional from that? I didn’t buy it.

Star Rating

I give this three stars, and Sharon once again showed improvement. I had a hard time believing Shaun was as stupid as he came across to start the novel. But I kept reading. I’m two books in and I’ve overlooked a lot of terrible writing already, why stop now right? This is like when you watch B-movies but you just can’t stop because they are so bad that you keep going.

This book showed a little more depth and character growth. Sharon exposed the magic system just a little bit more. The plot held more tension and there was a whodunit element to the novel.

The characters seemed to be in plenty of distress. There was less, though still some, random jumping around of characters. This time it was Ellie, not Shaun, who jumped around a little crazily.

The novel’s premise

Shaun and Sarah are fallen angles and basically Buffy-the-vampire-killer types. This is their story.

Parental Guide

Profanity:
The books come with the following warning:

Warning – these books are Adult Modern Fantasy, not YA. They are littered with profanity and may be considered sexually rampant by more conservative readers!

I thought that meant there might be a dozen f-words. Yeah. She used the word an absurd amount of times. The word “littered” in her warning is quite accurate, because the extreme amount f-words cheapened her story and became a major distraction, especially in book 2.

F-Word counts
Blood Bound: 37
Demon Divided: 87
Fate Fallen: 41

Sexuality: There is sex, but it isn’t graphically described. Sarah and the demon/vampire have a sexual relationship. Shaun gets it on in the kitchen with a werewolf in book three.

Violence: Lots of violence. Plenty of blood and gore, though not always, for example vampires turn to dust when killed.

Editing

Quality:Blood Bound: Poor. I made almost 40 highlights and most were editing issues.Demon Divided: Poor. I made almost 30 highlights and most were editing issues.Fate Fallen: Poor but improving. I only made 21 highlights and most were editing issues.

It seemed there is a language barrier I had to deal with. Sure the book is in English but I live in the western United States. I couldn’t find details on where the author lives exactly but the novels are set in fictional Scotland cities. The language issues involved much more than just an extra u in words like color/colour. There were missing words in a lot of sentences and it was distracting. However, some sentences were repeated with the same missing word, making me think the word wasn’t missing but excluding that word is just a dialect issue. So I am left wondering if all my highlights are editing issues or language differences.

The dialog was pretty good as the character interaction goes, but the dialog formatting became a major distraction. The author needs to start new paragraphs between one character talking and going into a separate character’s view. It is one thing the exclude dialog tags, it is another to have what looks like a dialog tag actually just be the next paragraph and suggest the wrong person is talking. Below is an example where Shaun is talking and then immediately after the quote, she has a tag indicating it was Sarah talking.

Sharon Stevens needs better editing and a few more rounds of proofreading to clean up these self-published stories.

“I don’t know about that.” She sighed. (In this sentence, Shaun is talking even though Sarah sighed—I think.)

I found myself lost and having to re-read sections quite often. A few times, I never figured out what was going on and just moved on. As I write this I am still astounded that I actually finished these books.

Imagination and Uniqueness

It got better. The imagination was weak to start book one, but it improved over the three books. The world grows with her imagination.

Characters

Shaun is a pretty good character. He is a flawed protagonist. He is described as having a missing eye, do to a fight with werewolves that happened earlier in his life.
Sarah starts out as an invincible, annoying brat, who crushes on bullies. Not really likable. It took a while before I cared for her as a character.

She did a good job with Ray and Dev. Sometimes side characters blend together, but these two didn’t blend at all. They are different and easily identifiable.

Magic System (fantasy)

I am still confused about what can and can’t be done with magic in this world. If the author has rules, I haven’t figured them out yet. A few things are done well, such as Sarah and Shaun’s ability to release a spirit from this world.

eBook Quality

Quality: Acceptable
I normally do poor, average, or high. But Sharon Stevenson was different and it was quite acceptable. She took a very plain text and completely featureless approach to formatting her eBook. The good news. It pretty much worked. Her books flow just fine. The simplicity prevented the formatting issues many indie authors face. She successfully pulled off not letting the eBook formatting get in the way of her story, which is most important.

Blood Bound, Book 1 has a very good cover. However, I thought the quality of the covers for books two and three were significantly worse. I think she needs to redo the covers for both books.

About the Author

Sharon Stevenson likes to read a lot and watches a bit too much horror. Here is a quote from her blog:

I spend too much time indoors and probably watch too many horror films. Some of my favourite things are; Alone time, people who know when to shut up, having a drink, eating pizza (usually after having too much drink the night before), reading books, adult swim cartoons, bad horror and sci-fi movies, proper good TV shows like Dexter & The Walking Dead, and last but not least having a laugh with my hilarious other half – this would usually include some of the above.

Star Rating

I found this book on the Fantasy and Sci-fi Rocks My World Facebook page. The cover looked awesome. The premise sounded like a story I would love. I so wanted to love this book. I was so excited to start reading it.

I expect my novels to be at least 350 pages. I prefer more. I am usually annoyed if the novel is only 300 pages. Imagine my surprise when “The End” arrived at page 214. I felt like I only got half a book—OK, maybe two-thirds of a book.

I had a really hard time reading this book. It took me almost two weeks. I usually devour a good book of 400+ pages in a couple nights. If they are really good, I give up sleep to read them. This one never kept me up reading it.

The writing didn’t work for me. William Massa chose to tell this story using the omniscient perspective. It seemed awkward to jump from one character’s thoughts to the next character’s thoughts.

A good rewrite is needed, not to change the story (well, maybe to add substance to the book’s awkward shortness) but to tell the exact same story with different sentences. Most the sentences seemed awkward. Many of them must could have been better sentences. He just couldn’t figure out how to make me as the reader feel the character’s emotions. Let me give you an example:

Her fear stood in sharp contrast to the ecstasy flickering over Cael’s gargoyle features.

This sentence is a telling sentence. Rhianna feels fear. Cael feels ecstacy. Those feeling contast. However, because he used the verb “stood” it seems like an active sentence, but it really isn’t. Stood is really just an alternate for the verb “was” in this sentence. In J. Abram Barneck’s article, Painting away passive voice, he explains that replacing the passive voice verb with an active voice verb is the first step, but that first step is not enough. Unfortunately, in this book, it seems the first step was as far as the author got in improving his passive voice sentences.

Overall, the book is probably worth the $2.99 it cost, especially if you like Gargoyles, which I do.

Book Details

Gargoyle Knight by William Massa self-published under Critical Mass Publishing on April 20, 2014. It is 214 pages

The novel’s premise

Cael and Artan are brothers in medieval Ireland. Artan is the younger brother, but is chosen by their father to inherit the throne due to Cael’s delving into dark magic. Using the power of the evil god Balor, Cael creates gargoyles and destroying the kingdom, killing Artan’s wife and children.

Flash forward to modern New York where Cael and Artan are stone Gargoyle statues. They are awakened when the Eye of Balor, a broken gem, is mended by blood after Rhianna cuts herself on jagged edge. Can Artan and Rhianna stop Cael before bringing on the apocalypse?

Editing

Quality: Below Average
Their were minor editing issues. For the first seventy pages or so, it appeared typo free but the typos increased in the rest of the book. In fact, there is one line that has a random j at the end:

“How’s my dad?”J

There were other typos. Along with the typos there were also some end quotes that were backwards.

Imagination and Uniqueness

The uniqueness is the one shining star in this book. I love Gargoyles and hadn’t yet encountered a Gargoyle urban fantasy. So this was a first.

The overall story was well-imagined but when it came to the fine details, the story was like a Monet painting; lacking the details up close.

Characters

Artan is the good Gargoyle. Cael is the bad Gargoyle. Rhianna is the daughter of an archaeological and finish her masters thesis in archaeology herself. There were other minor characters, but the book was too short to really get to know any character other than Artan and Rhianna.

Magic System (fantasy)

The magic was minimal and used by Cael. It seemed to be an evil gift from the dark god Balor. There was no “good” magic. The magic seemed to be mostly used to create Gargoyles and prepare for a ritual to release Balor into this world.

eBook Quality

Quality: Average
The book has an amazingly well-done cover. I loved the cover.

The inline table of contents was noticeably absent, but that doesn’t matter much in eBooks as there is a table of contents in all eBooks when you click Go To…

There were some issues here and there. Inconsistent use of the ellipsis. Unnecessary double spaces between paragraphs. End quotes that actually incorrectly beginning quotes.

Parental Guide

Profanity: No swearing at all that I recall. While there is no swearing in the Gargoyle Knight, there is an F-word at the back of this book in the teaser to his other novel Silicon Man.Sexuality: Minimal to none.Violence: The battles have violence. There is red blood and black gargoyle blood. And a head is cut off.

About the Author

William has lived in New York, Florida, Europe and now resides in Venice Beach surrounded by skaters and surfers.

Star Rating

Forsaken earned 3 stars from us. The best part about this book is Gwen. This book might have some fantasy elements, but this book is really a character book and Gwen is the character. I liked Gwen, and so I liked this book. I enjoyed moving through the real world with Gwen. I also enjoyed the hints of fantasy the author provided.

There were a few times when I started to get bored, but that is when Gwen’s life would change and I’d be pulled right back in. The author did a descent job keeping the story moving.

Book Details

Forsaken by R. J. Craddock is a young adult novel published by Transcendent Books in 2013. The second edition has been published.

The novel’s premise

The novel is really the story of a little girl who just appears in the snow and there are no footsteps behind her. She is an orphan. She has premonitions and is quicker and stronger than other little girls. And we are going to experience her life. This is her story.

Editing

Quality: Below Average

This book is self-published. Like many new independent authors, the cost of high quality editing is too high and non-professional editors were used. However, forgoing a professional editor leads to lingering editing issues. I highlighted a good number of them. The good news is that I was only minorly distracted by them. I read the 2nd edition. The editing issues really cost this book. It would probably have been 3.5 or 4 stars had there not been so many typos.

Imagination and Uniqueness

The imagination is bigger than the book. Her prologue and her Forsaken (Book 1), while both are quite imaginative, don’t seem to be connected . . . yet. In fact, I feel like we are being held back from Craddock’s full imagination and we need to get a better understanding of this prologue in Book 2.

I felt a real life movement to this book, which was quite enjoyable for me. Sure Gwen and Raven are different, but the majority of the book is about how they deal with real world issues. This made the story easy for all readers to identify with.

Also, a content edit could be used to crisp up this book. I think there are small places throughout that could be condensed and help this book move a little quicker. But then again, maybe those are necessary for us to really connect with Gwen.

Characters

Gwen is the character that matters. This is all about her. Sure Raven is somewhat there, and she interacts with many other characters throughout her life, but this is Gwen’s story. Her character is deep and you fall for her quite easily. You must like Gwen to like this book.

This book covers multiple years and at the start of the book, Gwen is described as quite young. Other than the first hospital scene, Gwen acts closer to eleven or twelve almost the entire book, even when she is six to ten.

Magic System (fantasy) / Real Science (Science Fiction)

Gwen are Raven are both different. I am pretty sure Gwen is one of “the Children of Cain,” while Raven turns out to be a werewolf. Gwen can use magic, and encounters a few other witches who attack her for reasons Gwen doesn’t understand. She is more powerful than them, though, but doesn’t know fully comprehend her magic yet.

We don’t get a complete sense of the magic world in book 1. But we feel a desire to read more and Craddock must deliver this in Book 2.

eBook Quality

Quality: High

The eBook quality is now, as of posting this article, quite adequate. We actually helped R. J. Craddock improve the quality of her eBook. It is difficult to make a high quality eBook and this is a struggle for many new self-published authors. A high quality and smooth flowing eBook should make her story much easier read. There should be few formatting issues to distract you from your reading.

About the Author

R. J. CRADDOCK Born Ruth Jerraisetti Harris in Oka Tamuning, Guam, Ruth is the youngest of eight children. As a young child she began telling stories, developing unique characters, and conjuring fantastical worlds in her mind. As she grew older, a thirst for reading overcame her and she devoured all kinds of books, finding kindred spirits in classic novelists such as Dickens, Bronte, and Fitzgerald. She started writing her first novel at age eleven. After high school she attended the Art Institute of Phoenix to pursue her other great passion: Art. Ruth now lives with her husband and three sons in Springville, Utah.

Star Rating

I am going to start out by saying, you should read this book. The second half is worth it. But I gotta be honest. I am not sure how this book is getting three stars from me. At about chapter 8, I was ready to throw this book out. Confusing passive voice littered the first half of the book. The writing was a nightmare and not in a good vampire novel way. Then Chapter 8 arrived and it was basically a prologue dropped into the middle of the novel, telling a story we basically had figured out anyway. And chapter 7 included the first half of the prologue but seen as a story told by Leisha to Samantha. I gleamed about one paragraph of needed detail from that entire back story. At this point, the book was barely holding on to a single star.

But I need two things to like a book. First, it has to be good enough to keep me up at night and second I have to want to read the second book. At about chapter 12, I was certain the answer to both would be no. But then I read the second half, in one late night. I couldn’t put it down. I am pretty sure I will read book 2 when it comes out.

This leaves me to wonder if the first half was written a long time ago by a much younger Adrienne Monson, who finally grew up as a writer before finishing this story.

Book Details

Dissension is vampire novel published by Jolly Fish Press in February of 2013. It is clean enough to be young adult but has a story line targeted to both adults and young adults.

The novel’s premise

Samantha, a sixteen year old girl, moves in with her father after her mother dies. After a premonition, Samantha discovers her father works for the government in a facility that is torturing other people.

Samantha rescues Leisha from the government facility only to find out that Leisha is a vampire. And from that moment on, Samantha is pulled into the vampire world.

Editing

Quality: Below Average

The number one issue this novel had was passive voice and mostly in the first half. The editors should have highlighted these lines and Adrienne should have written much better sentences. For example, in one scene Leisha is shot in the shoulder and then this was the following line: “She hissed at the pain and was immediately up in the air.” So this sentence is starts out active, “hissed”, and but ends up passive with “was immediately up in the air.” Why is she in the air? Did the bullet knock her in the air? Or did she jump? After re-reading, I feel like the author meant she jumped. But at this point I was pulled out of the story.

Ambiguous sentences also riddled the first half of the novel. This is probably a symptom of the passive voice. For example, Leisha is in desperate need to escape and there is a line: “Leisha didn’t waste any time killing them.” This sentence is very ambiguous. I assumed it meant she wasn’t going to take the time to kill them because escaping was more important. I was wrong. That line meant that Leisha killed them quickly. There was another ambiguous sentence when she “took no time” to rush at two men.

I am pretty sure that “realer” isn’t a word and should be “more real” instead. No it didn’t appear to be used as slang.

There was a missing space and comma issues.

I could go on. I had 30+ issues highlighted, mostly passive voice or eBook errors and other editing issues. Almost all of them are in the first half of the book.

More than the author, Jolly Fish Press should really take responsibility for this editing mess. If they had would have sent the passive voice and ambiguous sentences back to the writer, her story might be closer to 4 stars.

Imagination and Uniqueness

OK, so this an area where Adrienne excelled. Her imagination was top notch. This is the only reason I kept reading the book after the issues in the first half.

The history was well envisioned. The government facility and Samantha’s rescue of Leisha was done in rather simple but believable way.

The world of the vampires felt dark and dirty and evil, just like it should. It is amazing that this book somehow stayed PG for me. OK, maybe there was enough violence to make it PG-13 but even the violence wasn’t described in detail, allowing our imaginations to do the work.

Characters

There are two main characters and mostly the point of view is theirs.

Leisha is a two thousand year old vampire. Samantha is a sixteen year old girl. Their lives become intertwined and we follow these two characters throughout the story.

When both the characters were together, the point of view was not always done clearly. Sometimes it was hard to know if we were reading Leisha or Samantha’s thoughts. The POV character was easy to figure out, but needing to stop and figure it out pulled me out of the story each time I needed to do so.

The main villain Ptah, is described as an extremely evil chaos demon which entered a human creating the first vampire. However, when we see him, he seems to not be so much evil as he seems quite and calm. He is desperate for Leisha to embrace her vampire nature and join him. I kept being told he was evil, but I never really saw do much evil. I think what Victor and Annette did in her premonition at the end was far more evil than anything we ever see Ptah do.

Supernatural Powers

In this book, Samantha sees visions of the future. The vampires are fast and heal rapidly. The immortals are strong and heal even more rapidly. Vampires also have other small gifts. Leisha can read minds. Nick can lure people to him. Annette can invade a mind.

I really think the immortals needed more explanation. Other than long life and healing, what do they have?

eBook Quality

Quality: Average

This book seemed to be formatted tightly. The margins are smaller the most eBooks and the space between sentences was smaller. This was both good and bad. The tightness gave me a slightly more book-like read. However, the margins had problems when coupled with italics. Certain letters, like F, were cut off on the right side.

The ellipsis were done incorrectly. They should have been done with non-breaking spaces.

These little things pulled me from the story.

About the Author

Adrienne Monson lives in American Fork, Utah. She is a wife and mother of two children.

Here is a quote from her Amazon author page:

I love Zumba, kickboxing, and weightlifting. I also love yummy foods, so I don’t look like a workout guru.

I met her at the Life the Universe & Everything writers conference. I probably wouldn’t have read her book otherwise. From our short meeting, I would say she is a good combination of serious and fun.

Star Rating

A lot of people are giving this book low stars. I gave this 4 stars because . . . well, Veronica Roth must have iron writers armor and a keyboard of steel. She wrote with power and wrote the story exactly how it should of ended. I know a lot of people complain about the ending, but sometimes, well-written and real life endings are extremely hard for some readers.

Book Details

Allegiant by Veronic Roth was published by Katherine Tegen Books in October 2013. It had 545 pages.

The novel’s premise

Tris and Tobias leave Chicago, everything they have ever known, and see the surrounding world only to find out the people outside their windy city are not quite as oblivious of Chicago as they were led to believe.

Point of View

Quality: Needs Improvement

So in this third book, Veronica switches points of view between Tris and Tobias. This was not executed well. The only difference between the points of view was that under each chapter heading, the point of view character was listed: Tris or Tobias.

This POV switching didn’t work well for me. After two books of exclusively Tris’s point of view, Veronica needed to write in some obvious tag at the start of each Tobias chapter. Multiple times I was pages into the chapter before I realized the point of view was Tobias’s.

Also, I didn’t get the feel that Tobias had his own personality. In writing his chapters, Veronica really needed to give him his own voice. It seemed like we were getting Tobias’s point of view from Tris’s voice. To make matter’s worse, Tobias’s voice wasn’t exactly a man’s voice.

Editing

Quality: Standard

I highlighted a single comma overuse issue.

However the content editor should have helped with the point of view issues.

Imagination and Uniqueness

The imagination seemed quite limited. Veronica let us out of Chicago but she didn’t seem to be able to show us the world very well. We got to see a single government facility and a single fringe neighborhood.

There were a lot of ways the outside world could have gone. Being stuck in a government facility the whole book, except for Tris’s single trip to the fringe, which while good, was not enough on its own.

Characters

This is the third book, so by now we are all familiar with Beatrice Prior (Tris) and Tobias Eaton (Four), and their budding romance. Though the relationship wasn’t as awesome as it could have been after last been when it seemed so stressed. There relationship was once again stressed.

The addition of a few characters from outside helped this book along. However, Tris and Tobias remained the focus.

There were a lot of side characters and that made it hard to focus on any particular side plot and this story really needed some better side plots.

eBook Quality

Quality: High

Very high quality eBook and extremely easy to read.

About the Author

Veronica Roth is from Chicago, in fact, she and her husband still live there.

While a student, she often chose to work on the story that would become Divergent instead of doing her homework.

I am going suggest that you do your homework first and stay in school.

Apart from writing and reading, I like to cook.

— Quotes form Harper Collins web site

After this series we know that Veronica has no qualms about killing characters and we love to hate her for it.

Star Rating

I really liked Acquisitions, especially the world and the characters. It earned all 4-1/2 stars. I almost got bored reading the scene on the train, but then the book moved on just in time. Acquisitions kept me up a little bit, making me give up sleep to read it (but not all night). Haggerty didn’t hold back in her story. The characters and the world are believable, and yes, there are actually characters that die.

Book Details

Acquisitions by Christine Haggerty is a 380 page dystopian novel published by Fox Hollow Publications in December of 2013. This is book 1 of a series called The Plague Legacy.

The novel’s premise

An apocalyptic disease has brought the world to its knees. Cameron Landry becomes and acquisition, chosen to go to Salvation. Unfortunately, Devon, who looks normal but is a mutant who despises Cameron, is going too.

Editing

Quality: Average

I found a single editing issue: a missing space between two words. Other than that, the editing was perfect.

Imagination and Uniqueness

This world is well-imagined. I enjoyed the setting, which starts out somewhere in the remains of the western United States. The plague is very well-described through Cameron’s memories. He lost both his parents and his brother to the plague.

Characters

I really liked Cameron Landry (Cam) at the start of the book. He is a likeable character who sticks up to bullies such as Devon.

There is a hint of romance brewing between Cam and Devon’s Sister, Tara.

The mutants are done well but simply. Her imagination is so good yet so easy. The plague created the mutants, but other than a single mark, faster healing, and a little more strength, mutants are otherwise normal.

The adults are few and far between, but they are the leaders. They are pretty enigmatic, and there is plenty of mystery to the adults. Some have been to Salvation and there is an air of awe about those who have gone there and come back.

eBook Quality

Quality: Average

The eBook had a single issue with formatting in the first chapter. I actually worked with Fox Hollow Publishing to help them fix it, so hopefully, you won’t see that issue. Other than that, it was pretty good quality. It lacked a few extra features that come with high quality eBooks but overall, the eBook has nothing to distract you.

About the Author

Christine Nielson Haggerty grew up in rural Utah with three brothers, a sister, several chickens, a goat, and an outhouse. She always loved the escape of science fiction and fantasy and the art of writing, and her passion is to craft stories of strength and survival.

Christine taught high school language arts for several years, encouraging perfection of the language in her young adult students. Now she appreciates her background in classic literature and history as she draws on the past to write about the present and the future.